The Act of Creation: Bridging Transcendence and Immanence

Introduction

"Sing, O Goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus,
that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans." In these
opening lines of the Iliad, Homer invokes the Muse. For
Homer the act of creating poetry is a divine gift, one that derives
from an otherworldly source and is not ultimately reducible to
this world. This conception of human creativity as a divine gift
pervaded the ancient world, and was also evident among the Hebrews.
In Exodus, for instance, we read that God filled the two artisans
Bezaleel and Aholiab with wisdom so that they might complete the
work of the tabernacle.

The idea that creative activity is a divine gift has largely
been lost these days. To ask a cognitive scientist, for instance,
what made Mozart a creative genius is unlikely to issue in an
appeal to God. If the cognitive scientist embraces neuropsychology,
he may suggest that Mozart was blessed with a particularly fortunate
collocation of neurons. If he prefers an information processing
model of mentality, he may attribute Mozart's genius to some particularly
effective computational modules. If he is taken with Skinner's
behaviorism, he may attribute Mozart's genius to some particularly
effective reinforcement schedules (perhaps imposed early in his
life by his father Leopold). And no doubt, in all of these explanations
the cognitive scientist will invoke Mozart's natural genetic endowment.
In place of a divine afflatus, the modern cognitive scientist
explains human creativity purely in terms of natural processes.

Who's right, the ancients or the moderns? My own view is that
the ancients got it right. An act of creation is always a divine
gift and cannot be reduced to purely naturalistic categories.
To be sure, creative activity often involves the transformation
of natural objects, like the transformation of a slab of marble
into Michelangelo's David. But even when confined to natural objects,
creative activity is never naturalistic without remainder. The
divine is always present at some level and indispensable.

Invoking the divine to explain an act of creation is, of course,
wholly unacceptable to the ruling intellectual elite. Naturalism,
the view that nature is the ultimate reality, has become the default
position for all serious inquiry among our intellectual elite.
From Biblical studies to law to education to science to the arts,
inquiry is allowed to proceed only under the supposition that
nature is the ultimate reality. Naturalism denies any divine element
to the creative act. By contrast, the Christian tradition plainly
asserts that God is the ultimate reality and that nature itself
is a divine creative act. Within Christian theism, God is primary
and fundamental whereas nature is secondary and derivative. Naturalism,
by contrast, asserts that nature is primary and fundamental.

Theism and naturalism provide radically different perspectives
on the act of creation. Within theism any act of creation is also
a divine act. Within naturalism any act of creation emerges from
a purely natural substrate-the very minds that create are, within
naturalism, the result of a long evolutionary process that itself
was not created. The aim of this talk, then, is to present a general
account of creation that is faithful to the Christian tradition,
that resolutely rejects naturalism, and that engages contemporary
developments in science and philosophy.

The Challenge of Naturalism

Why should anyone want to understand the act of creation naturalistically?
Naturalism, after all, offers fewer resources than theism. Naturalism
simply gives you nature. Theism gives you not only nature, but
also God and anything outside of nature that God might have created.
The ontology of theism is far richer than that of naturalism.
Why, then, settle for less?

Naturalists do not see themselves as settling for less. Instead,
they regard theism as saddled with a lot of extraneous entities
that serve no useful function. The regulative principle of naturalism
is Occam's razor. Occam's razor is a principle of parsimony that
requires eliminating entities that perform no useful function.
Using Occam's razor, naturalists attempt to slice away the superstitions
of the past-and for naturalists the worst superstition of all
is God. People used to invoke God to explain all sorts of things
for which we now have perfectly good naturalistic explanations.
Accordingly, God is a superstition that needs to be excised from
our understanding of the world. The naturalists' dream is to invent
a theory of everything that entirely eliminates the need for God
(Stephen Hawking is a case in point).

Since naturalists are committed to eliminating God from every
domain of inquiry, let us consider how successfully they have
eliminated God from the act of creation. Even leaving aside the
creation of the world and focusing solely on human acts of creation,
do we find that naturalistic categories have fully explained human
creativity? Occam's razor is all fine and well for removing stubble,
but while we're at it let's make sure we don't lop off a nose
or ear. With respect to human creativity, let's make sure that
in eliminating God the naturalist isn't giving us a lobotomized
account of human creativity. Einstein once remarked that everything
should be made as simple as possible but not simpler. In eliminating
God from the act of creation, the naturalist needs to make sure
that nothing of fundamental importance has been lost. Not only
has the naturalist failed to provide this assurance, but there
is good reason to think that any account of the creative act that
omits God is necessarily incomplete and defective.

What does naturalism have to say about human acts of creation?
For the moment let's bracket the question of creativity and consider
simply what it is for a human being to act. Humans are intelligent
agents that act with intentions to accomplish certain ends. Although
some acts by humans are creative, others are not. Georgia O'Keefe
painting an iris is a creative act. Georgia O'Keefe flipping on
a light switch is an act but not a creative act. For the moment,
therefore, let us focus simply on human agency, leaving aside
human creative agency.

How, then, does naturalism make sense of human agency? Although
the naturalistic literature that attempts to account for human
agency is vast, the naturalist's options are in fact quite limited.
The naturalist's world is not a mind-first world. Intelligent
agency is therefore in no sense prior to or independent of nature.
Intelligent agency is neither sui generis nor basic. Intelligent
agency is a derivative mode of causation that depends on underlying
naturalistic-and therefore unintelligent-causes. Humans agency
in particular supervenes on underlying natural processes, which
in turn usually are identified with brain function.

It is important to distinguish the naturalist's understanding
of causation from the theist's. Within theism God is the ultimate
reality. Consequently, whenever God acts, there can be nothing
outside of God that compels God's action. God is not a billiard
ball that must move when another billiard ball strikes it. God's
actions are free, and though he responds to his creation, he does
not do so out of necessity. Within theism, therefore, divine action
is not reducible to some more basic mode of causation. Indeed,
within theism divine action is the most basic mode of causation
since any other mode of causation involves creatures which themselves
were created in a divine act.

Now consider naturalism. Within naturalism nature is the ultimate
reality. Consequently, whenever something happens in nature, there
can be nothing outside of nature that shares responsibility for
what happened. Thus, when an event happens in nature, it is either
because some other event in nature was responsible for it or because
it simply happened, apart from any other determining event. Events
therefore happen either because they were caused by other events
or because they happened spontaneously. The first of these is
usually called "necessity," the second "chance."
For the naturalist chance and necessity are the fundamental modes
of causation. Together they constitute what are called "natural
causes." Naturalism, therefore, seeks to account for intelligent
agency in terms of natural causes.

How well have natural causes been able to account for intelligent
agency? Cognitive scientists have achieved nothing like a full
reduction. The French Enlightenment thinker Pierre Cabanis once
remarked: "Les nerfs-voilà tout l'homme" (the
nerves-that's all there is to man). A full reduction of intelligent
agency to natural causes would give a complete account of human
behavior, intention, and emotion in terms of neural processes.
Nothing like this has been achieved. No doubt, neural processes
are correlated with behavior, intention, and emotion. Anger presumably
is correlated with certain localized brain excitations. But localized
brain excitations hardly explain anger any better than do overt
behaviors associated with anger-like shouting obscenities.

Because cognitive scientists have yet to effect a full reduction
of intelligent agency to natural causes, they speak of intelligent
agency as supervening on natural causes. Supervenience
is a hierarchical relationship between higher order processes
(in this case intelligent agency) and lower order processes (in
this case natural causes). What supervenience says is that the
relationship between the higher and lower order processes is a
one-way street, with the lower determining the higher. To say,
for instance, that intelligent agency supervenes on neurophysiology
is to say that once all the facts about neurophysiology are in
place, all the facts about intelligent agency are determined as
well. Supervenience makes no pretense at reductive analysis. It
simply asserts that the lower level determines the higher level-how
it does it, we don't know.

Supervenience is therefore an insulating strategy, designed
to protect a naturalistic account of intelligent agency until
a full reductive explanation is found. Supervenience, though not
providing a reduction, tells us that in principle a reduction
exists. Given that nothing like a full reductive explanation of
intelligent agency is at hand, why should we think that such a
reduction is even possible? To be sure, if we knew that naturalism
were correct, then supervenience would follow. But naturalism
itself is at issue.

Neuroscience, for instance, is nowhere near achieving its ambitions,
and that despite its strident rhetoric. Hardcore neuroscientists,
for instance, refer disparagingly to the ordinary psychology of
beliefs, desires, and emotions as "folk psychology."
The implication is that just as "folk medicine" had
to give way to "real medicine," so "folk psychology"
will have to give way to a revamped psychology that is grounded
in neuroscience. In place of talking cures that address our beliefs,
desires, and emotions, tomorrow's healers of the soul will manipulate
brains states directly and ignore such outdated categories as
beliefs, desires, and emotions.

At least so the story goes. Actual neuroscience research has
yet to keep pace with its vaulting ambition. That should hardly
surprise us. The neurophysiology of our brains is incredibly plastic
and has proven notoriously difficult to correlate with intentional
states. For instance, Louis Pasteur, despite suffering a cerebral
accident, continued to enjoy a flourishing scientific career.
When his brain was examined after he died, it was discovered that
half the brain had completely atrophied. How does one explain
a flourishing intellectual life despite a severely damaged brain
if mind and brain coincide?

Or consider a still more striking example. The December 12th,
1980 issue of Science contained an article by Roger Lewin
titled "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?" In the article,
Lewin reported a case study by John Lorber, a British neurologist
and professor at Sheffield University. I quote from the article:

"There's a young student at this university," says
Lorber, "who has an IQ of 126, has gained a first-class honors
degree in mathematics, and is socially completely normal. And
yet the boy has virtually no brain." [Lewin continues:] The
student's physician at the university noticed that the youth had
a slightly larger than normal head, and so referred him to Lorber,
simply out of interest. "When we did a brain scan on him,"
Lorber recalls, "we saw that instead of the normal 4.5-centimeter
thickness of brain tissue between the ventricles and the cortical
surface, there was just a thin layer of mantle measuring a millimeter
or so. His cranium is filled mainly with cerebrospinal fluid."

Against such anomalies, Cabanis's dictum, "the nerves-that's
all there is to man," hardly inspires confidence. Yet as
Thomas Kuhn has taught us, a science that is progressing fast
and furiously is not about to be derailed by a few anomalies.
Neuroscience is a case in point. For all the obstacles it faces
in trying to reduce intelligent agency to natural causes, neuroscience
persists in the Promethean determination to show that mind does
ultimately reduce to neurophysiology. Absent a prior commitment
to naturalism, this determination will seem misguided. On the
other hand, given a prior commitment to naturalism, this determination
is readily understandable.

Understandable yes, obligatory no. Most cognitive scientists
do not rest their hopes with neuroscience. Yes, if naturalism
is correct, then a reduction of intelligent agency to neurophysiology
is in principle possible. The sheer difficulty of even attempting
this reduction, both experimental and theoretical, however, leaves
many cognitive scientists looking for a more manageable field
to invest their energies. As it turns out, the field of choice
is computer science, and especially its subdiscipline of artificial
intelligence (abbreviated AI). Unlike brains, computers are neat
and precise. Also, unlike brains, computers and their programs
can be copied and mass-produced. Inasmuch as science thrives on
replicability and control, computer science offers tremendous
practical advantages over neurological research.

Whereas the goal of neuroscience is to reduce intelligent agency
to neurophysiology, the goal of artificial intelligence is to
reduce intelligent agency to computer algorithms. Since computers
operate deterministically, reducing intelligent agency to computer
algorithms would indeed constitute a naturalistic reduction of
intelligent agency. Should artificial intelligence succeed in
reducing intelligent agency to computation, cognitive scientists
would still have the task of showing in what sense brain function
is computational (alternatively, Marvin Minsky's dictum "the
mind is a computer made of meat" would still need to be verified).
Even so, the reduction of intelligent agency to computation would
go a long way toward establishing a purely naturalistic basis
for human cognition.

An obvious question now arises: Can computation explain intelligent
agency? First off, let's be clear that no actual computer system
has come anywhere near to simulating the full range of capacities
we associate with human intelligent agency. Yes, computers can
do certain narrowly circumscribed tasks exceedingly well (like
play chess). But require a computer to make a decision based on
incomplete information and calling for common sense, and the computer
will be lost. Perhaps the toughest problem facing artificial intelligence
researchers is what's called the frame problem. The frame
problem is getting a computer to find the appropriate frame of
reference for solving a problem.

Consider, for instance, the following story: A man enters a
bar. The bartender asks, "What can I do for you?" The
man responds, "I'd like a glass of water." The bartender
pulls out a gun and shouts, "Get out of here!" The man
says "thank you" and leaves. End of story. What is the
appropriate frame of reference? No, this isn't a story by Franz
Kafka. The key item of information needed to make sense of this
story is this: The man has the hiccups. By going to the bar to
get a drink of water, the man hoped to cure his hiccups. The bartender,
however, decided on a more radical cure. By terrifying the man
with a gun, the bartender cured the man's hiccups immediately.
Cured of his hiccups, the man was grateful and left. Humans are
able to understand the appropriate frame of reference for such
stories immediately. Computers, on the other hand, haven't a clue.

Ah, but just wait. Give an army of clever programmers enough
time, funding, and computational power, and just see if they don't
solve the frame problem. Naturalists are forever issuing such
promissory notes, claiming that a conclusive confirmation of naturalism
is right around the corner-just give our scientists a bit more
time and money. John Polkinghorne refers to this practice as "promissory
materialism."

Confronted with such promises, what's a theist to do? To refuse
such promissory notes provokes the charge of obscurantism, but
to accept them means suspending one's theism. It is possible to
reject promissory materialism without meriting the charge of obscurantism.
The point to realize is that a promissory note need only be taken
seriously if there is good reason to think that it can be paid.
The artificial intelligence community has thus far offered no
compelling reason for thinking that it will ever solve the frame
problem. Indeed, computers that employ common sense to determine
appropriate frames of reference continue utterly to elude computer
scientists.

Given the practical difficulties of producing a computer that
faithfully models human cognition, the hardcore artificial intelligence
advocate can change tactics and argue on theoretical grounds that
humans are simply disguised computers. The argument runs something
like this. Human beings are finite. Both the space of possible
human behaviors and the space of possible sensory inputs are finite.
For instance, there are only so many distinguishable word combinations
that we can utter and only so many distinguishable sound combinations
that can strike our eardrums. When represented mathematically,
the total number of human lives that can be distinguished empirically
is finite. Now it is an immediate consequence of recursion theory
(the mathematical theory that undergirds computer science) that
any operations and relations on finite sets are computable. It
follows that human beings can be represented computationally.
Humans are therefore functionally equivalent to computers. QED.

This argument can be nuanced. For instance, we can introduce
a randomizing element into our computations to represent quantum
indeterminacy. What's important here, however, is the gist of
the argument. The argument asks us to grant that humans are essentially
finite. Once that assumption is granted, recursion theory tells
us that everything a finite being does is computable. We may never
actually be able to build the machines that render us computable.
But in principle we could given enough memory and fast enough
processors.

It's at this point that opponents of computational reductionism
usually invoke Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Gödel's
theorem is said to refute computational reductionism by showing
that humans can do things that computers cannot-namely, produce
a Gödel sentence. John Lucas made such an argument in the
early 1960s, and his argument continues to be modified and revived.
Now it is perfectly true that humans can produce Gödel sentences
for computational systems external to themselves. But computers
can as well be programmed to compute Gödel sentences for
computational systems external to themselves. This point is seldom
appreciated, but becomes evident from recursion-theoretic proofs
of Gödel's theorem (see, for example, Klaus Weihrauch's Computability).

The problem, then, is not to find Gödel sentences for
computational systems external to oneself. The problem is for
an agent to examine oneself as a computational system and therewith
produce one's own Gödel sentence. If human beings are non-computational,
then there won't be any Gödel sentence to be found. If, on
the other hand, human beings are computational, then, by Gödel's
theorem, we won't be able to find our own Gödel sentences.
And indeed, we haven't. Our inability to translate neurophysiology
into computation guarantees that we can't even begin computing
our Gödel sentences if indeed we are computational systems.
Yes, for a computational system laid out before us we can determine
its Gödel sentence. Nevertheless, we don't have sufficient
access to ourselves to lay ourselves out before ourselves and
thereby determine our Gödel sentences. It follows that neither
Gödel's theorem nor our ability to prove Gödel's theorem
shows that humans can do things that computers cannot.

Accordingly, Gödel's theorem fails to refute the argument
for computational reductionism based on human finiteness. To recap
that argument, humans are finite because the totality of their
possible behavioral outputs and possible sensory inputs is finite.
Moreover, all operations and relations on finite sets are by recursion
theory computable. Hence, humans are computational systems. This
is the argument. What are we to make of it? Despite the failure
of Gödel's theorem to block its conclusion, is there a flaw
in the argument?

Yes there is. The flaw consists in identifying human beings
with their behavioral outputs and sensory inputs. Alternatively,
the flaw consists in reducing our humanity to what can be observed
and measured. We are more than what can be observed and measured.
Once, however, we limit ourselves to what can be observed and
measured, we are necessarily in the realm of the finite and therefore
computable. We can only make so many observations. We can only
take so many measurements. Moreover, our measurements never admit
infinite gradations (indeed, there's always some magnitude below
which quantities become empirically indistinguishable). Our empirical
selves are therefore essentially finite. It follows that unless
our actual selves transcend our empirical selves, our actual selves
will be finite as well-and therefore computational.

Roger Penrose understands this problem. In The Emperor's
New Mind and in his more recent Shadows of the Mind,
he invokes quantum theory to underwrite a non-computational view
of brain and mind. Penrose's strategy is the same that we saw
for Gödel's theorem: Find something humans can do that computers
can't. There are plenty of mathematical functions that are non-computable.
Penrose therefore appeals to quantum processes in the brain whose
mathematical characterization employs non-computable functions.

Does quantum theory offer a way out of computational reductionism?
I would say no. Non-computable functions are an abstraction. To
be non-computable, functions have to operate on infinite sets.
The problem, however, is that we have no observational experience
of infinite sets or of the non-computable functions defined on
them. Yes, the mathematics of quantum theory employs non-computable
functions. But when we start plugging in concrete numbers and
doing calculations, we are back to finite sets and computable
functions.

Granted, we may find it convenient to employ non-computable
functions in characterizing some phenomenon. But when we need
to say something definite about the phenomenon, we must supply
concrete numbers, and suddenly we are back in the realm of the
computable. Non-computability exists solely as a mathematical
abstraction-a useful abstraction, but an abstraction nonetheless.
Precisely because our behavioral outputs and sensory inputs are
finite, there is no way to test non-computability against experience.
All scientific data are finite, and any mathematical operations
we perform on that data are computable. Non-computable functions
are therefore always dispensable, however elegant they may appear
mathematically.

There is, however, still a deeper problem with Penrose's program
to eliminate computational reductionism. Suppose we could be convinced
that there are processes in the brain that are non-computational.
For Penrose they are quantum processes, but whatever form they
take, as long as they are natural processes, we are still dealing
with a naturalistic reduction of mind. Computational reductionism
is but one type of naturalistic reductionism-certainly the most
extreme, but by no means the only one. Penrose's program offers
to replace computational processes with quantum processes. Quantum
processes, however, are as fully naturalistic as computational
processes. In offering to account for mind in terms of quantum
theory, Penrose is therefore still wedded to a naturalistic reduction
of mind and intelligent agency.

It's time to ask the obvious question: Why should anyone want
to make this reduction? Certainly, if we have a prior commitment
to naturalism, we will want to make it. But apart from that commitment,
why attempt it? As we've seen, neurophysiology hasn't a clue about
how to reduce intelligent agency to natural causes (hence its
continued retreat to concepts like supervenience, emergence, and
hierarchy-concepts which merely cloak ignorance). We've also seen
that no actual computational systems show any sign of reducing
intelligent agency to computation. The argument that we are computational
systems because the totality of our possible behavioral outputs
and possible sensory inputs is finite holds only if we presuppose
that we are nothing more than the sum of those behavioral outputs
and sensory inputs. So too, Penrose's argument that we are naturalistic
systems because some well-established naturalistic theory (in
this case quantum theory) characterizes our neurophysiology holds
only if the theory does indeed accurately characterize our neurophysiology
(itself a dubious claim given the frequency with which scientific
theories are overturned) and so long as we presuppose that we
are nothing more than a system characterized by some naturalistic
theory.

Bottom line: The naturalistic reduction of intelligent agency
is not the conclusion of an empirically-based evidential argument,
but merely a straightforward consequence of presupposing naturalism
in the first place. Indeed, the empirical evidence for a naturalistic
reduction of intelligent agency is wholly lacking. For instance,
nowhere does Penrose write down the Schroedinger equation for
someone's brain, and then show how actual brain states agree with
brain states predicted by the Schroedinger equation. Physicists
have a hard enough time writing down the Schroedinger equation
for systems of a few interacting particles. Imagine the difficulty
of writing down the Schroedinger equation for the multi-billion
neurons that constitute each of our brains. It ain't going to
happen. Indeed, the only thing these naturalistic reductions of
intelligent agency have until recently had in their favor is Occam's
razor. And even this naturalistic mainstay is proving small comfort.
Indeed, recent developments in the theory of intelligent design
are showing that intelligent agency cannot be reduced to natural
causes. Let us now turn to these developments.

The Resurgence of Design

In arguing against computational reductionism, both John Lucas
and Roger Penrose attempted to find something humans can do that
computers cannot. For Lucas, it was to construct a Gödel
sentence. For Penrose, it was finding in neurophysiology a non-computational
quantum process. Neither of these refutations succeed against
computational reductionism, much less against a general naturalistic
reduction of intelligent agency. Nevertheless, the strategy underlying
these attempted refutations is sound, namely, to find something
intelligent agents can do that natural causes cannot. We don't
have to look far. All of us attribute things to intelligent agents
that we wouldn't dream of attributing to natural causes. For instance,
natural causes can throw scrabble pieces on a board, but cannot
arrange the pieces into meaningful sentences. To obtain a meaningful
arrangement requires an intelligent agent.

This intuition, that natural causes are too stupid to do the
things that intelligent agents are capable of, has underlain the
design arguments of past centuries. Throughout the centuries theologians
have argued that nature exhibits features which nature itself
cannot explain, but which instead require an intelligence that
transcends nature. From Church fathers like Minucius Felix and
Basil the Great (third and fourth centuries) to medieval scholastics
like Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas (twelfth and thirteenth
centuries) to reformed thinkers like Thomas Reid and Charles Hodge
(eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), we find theologians making
design arguments, arguing from the data of nature to an intelligence
operating over and above nature.

Design arguments are old hat. Indeed, design arguments continue
to be a staple of philosophy and religion courses. The most famous
of the design arguments is William Paley's watchmaker argument.
According to Paley, if we find a watch in a field, the watch's
adaptation of means to ends (that is, the adaptation of its parts
to telling time) ensures that it is the product of an intelligence,
and not simply the output of undirected natural processes. So
too, the marvelous adaptations of means to ends in organisms,
whether at the level of whole organisms, or at the level of various
subsystems (Paley focused especially on the mammalian eye), ensure
that organisms are the product of an intelligence.

Though intuitively appealing, Paley's argument had until recently
fallen into disuse. This is now changing. In the last five years
design has witnessed an explosive resurgence. Scientists are beginning
to realize that design can be rigorously formulated as a scientific
theory. What has kept design outside the scientific mainstream
these last hundred and forty years is the absence of a precise
criterion for distinguishing intelligent agency from natural causes.
For design to be scientifically tenable, scientists have to be
sure they can reliably determine whether something is designed.
Johannes Kepler, for instance, thought the craters on the moon
were intelligently designed by moon dwellers. We now know that
the craters were formed naturally. It's this fear of falsely attributing
something to design only to have it overturned later that has
prevented design from entering science proper. With a precise
criterion for discriminating intelligently from unintelligently
caused objects, scientists are now able to avoid Kepler's mistake.

Before examining this criterion, I want to offer a brief clarification
about the word "design." I'm using "design"
in three distinct senses. First, I use it to denote the scientific
theory that distinguishes intelligent agency from natural causes,
a theory that increasingly is being referred to as "design
theory" or "intelligent design theory" (IDT). Second,
I use "design" to denote what it is about intelligently
produced objects that enables us to tell that they are intelligently
produced and not simply the result of natural causes. When intelligent
agents act, they leave behind a characteristic trademark or signature.
The scholastics used to refer to the "vestiges of creation."
The Latin vestigium means footprint. It was thought that
God, though not physically present, left his footprints throughout
creation. Hugh Ross has referred to the "fingerprint of God."
It is "design" in this sense-as a trademark, signature,
vestige, or fingerprint-that our criterion for discriminating
intelligently from unintelligently caused objects is meant to
identify. Lastly, I use "design" to denote intelligent
agency itself. Thus, to say that something is designed is to say
that an intelligent agent caused it.

Let us now turn to my advertised criterion for discriminating
intelligently from unintelligently caused objects. Although a
detailed treatment of this criterion is technical and appears
in my book The Design Inference, the basic idea is straightforward
and easily illustrated. Consider how the radio astronomers in
the movie Contact detected an extra-terrestrial intelligence.
This movie, which came out last summer and was based on a novel
by Carl Sagan, was an enjoyable piece of propaganda for the SETI
research program-the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
To make the movie interesting, the SETI researchers had to find
an extra-terrestrial intelligence (the actual SETI program has
yet to be so fortunate).

How, then, did the SETI researchers in Contact find
an extra-terrestrial intelligence? To increase their chances of
finding an extra-terrestrial intelligence, SETI researchers have
to monitor millions of radio signals from outer space. Many natural
objects in space produce radio waves. Looking for signs of design
among all these naturally produced radio signals is like looking
for a needle in a haystack. To sift through the haystack, SETI
researchers run the signals they monitor through computers programmed
with pattern-matchers. So long as a signal doesn't match one of
the pre-set patterns, it will pass through the pattern-matching
sieve. If, on the other hand, it does match one of those patterns,
then, depending on the pattern matched, the SETI researchers may
have cause for celebration.

The SETI researchers in Contact did find a signal worthy
of celebration, namely the sequence of prime numbers from 2 to
101, represented as a series of beats and pauses (2 = beat-beat-pause;
3 = beat-beat-beat-pause; 5 = beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-pause;
etc.). The SETI researchers in Contact took this signal
as decisive confirmation of an extra-terrestrial intelligence.
What is it about this signal that warrants us inferring design?
Whenever we infer design, we must establish two things-complexity
and specification. Complexity ensures that the object in
question is not so simple that it can readily be explained by
natural causes. Specification ensures that this object exhibits
the type of pattern that is the signature of intelligence.

To see why complexity is crucial for inferring design, consider
what would have happened if the SETI researchers had simply witnessed
a single prime number-say the number 2 represented by two beats
followed by a pause. It is a sure bet that no SETI researcher,
if confronted with this three-bit sequence (beat-beat-pause),
is going to contact the science editor at the New York Times,
hold a press conference, and announce that an extra-terrestrial
intelligence has been discovered. No headline is going to read,
"Aliens Master the Prime Number Two!"

The problem is that two beats followed by a pause is too short
a sequence (that is, has too little complexity) to establish that
an extra-terrestrial intelligence with knowledge of prime numbers
produced it. A randomly beating radio source might by chance just
happen to output the sequence beat-beat-pause. The sequence of
1126 beats and pauses required to represent the prime numbers
from 2 to 101, however, is a different story. Here the sequence
is sufficiently long (that is, has enough complexity) to confirm
that an extra-terrestrial intelligence could have produced it.

Even so, complexity by itself isn't enough to eliminate natural
causes and detect design. If I flip a coin 1000 times, I'll participate
in a highly complex (or what amounts to the same thing, highly
improbable) event. Indeed, the sequence I end up flipping will
be one of 10300 possible sequences. This sequence, however, won't
trigger a design inference. Though complex, it won't exhibit a
pattern characteristic of intelligence. In contrast, consider
the sequence of prime numbers from 2 to 101. Not only is this
sequence complex, but it also constitutes a pattern characteristic
of intelligence. The SETI researcher who in the movie Contact
first noticed the sequence of prime numbers put it this way: "This
isn't noise, this has structure."

What makes a pattern characteristic of intelligence and therefore
suitable for detecting design? The basic intuition distinguishing
patterns that alternately succeed or fail to detect design is
easily motivated. Consider the case of an archer. Suppose an archer
stands fifty meters from a large wall with bow and arrow in hand.
The wall, let's say, is sufficiently large that the archer cannot
help but hit it. Now suppose each time the archer shoots an arrow
at the wall, the archer paints a target around the arrow so that
the arrow sits squarely in the bull's-eye. What can be concluded
from this scenario? Absolutely nothing about the archer's ability
as an archer. Yes, a pattern is being matched; but it is a pattern
fixed only after the arrow has been shot. The pattern is thus
purely ad hoc.

But suppose instead the archer paints a fixed target on the
wall and then shoots at it. Suppose the archer shoots a hundred
arrows, and each time hits a perfect bull's-eye. What can be concluded
from this second scenario? Confronted with this second scenario
we are obligated to infer that here is a world-class archer, one
whose shots cannot legitimately be referred to luck, but rather
must be referred to the archer's skill and mastery. Skill and
mastery are of course instances of design.

The type of pattern where the archer fixes a target first and
then shoots at it is common to statistics, where it is known as
setting a rejection region prior to an experiment. In statistics,
if the outcome of an experiment falls within a rejection region,
the chance hypothesis supposedly responsible for the outcome is
rejected. Now a little reflection makes clear that a pattern need
not be given prior to an event to eliminate chance and implicate
design. Consider, for instance, a cryptographic text that encodes
a message. Initially it looks like a random sequence of letters.
Initially we lack any pattern for rejecting natural causes and
inferring design. But as soon as someone gives us the cryptographic
key for deciphering the text, we see the hidden message. The cryptographic
key provides the pattern we need for detecting design. Moreover,
unlike the patterns of statistics, it is given after the fact.

Patterns therefore divide into two types, those that in the
presence of complexity warrant a design inference and those that
despite the presence of complexity do not warrant a design inference.
The first type of pattern I call a specification, the second
a fabrication. Specifications are the non-ad hoc patterns
that can legitimately be used to eliminate natural causes and
detect design. In contrast, fabrications are the ad hoc patterns
that cannot legitimately be used to detect design. The distinction
between specifications and fabrications can be made with full
statistical rigor.

Complexity and specification together yield a criterion for
detecting design. I call it the complexity-specification criterion.
According to this criterion, we reliably detect design in something
whenever it is both complex and specified. To see why the complexity-specification
criterion is exactly the right instrument for detecting design,
we need to understand what it is about intelligent agents that
makes them detectable in the first place. The principal characteristic
of intelligent agency is choice. Whenever an intelligent agent
acts, it chooses from a range of competing possibilities.

This is true not just of humans, but of animals as well as
of extra-terrestrial intelligences. A rat navigating a maze must
choose whether to go right or left at various points in the maze.
When SETI researchers attempt to discover intelligence in the
extra-terrestrial radio transmissions they are monitoring, they
assume an extra-terrestrial intelligence could have chosen any
number of possible radio transmissions, and then attempt to match
the transmissions they observe with certain patterns as opposed
to others. Whenever a human being utters meaningful speech, a
choice is made from a range of possible sound-combinations that
might have been uttered. Intelligent agency always entails discrimination,
choosing certain things, ruling out others.

Given this characterization of intelligent agency, the crucial
question is how to recognize it. Intelligent agents act by making
a choice. How then do we recognize that an intelligent agent has
made a choice? A bottle of ink spills accidentally onto a sheet
of paper; someone takes a fountain pen and writes a message on
a sheet of paper. In both instances ink is applied to paper. In
both instances one among an almost infinite set of possibilities
is realized. In both instances a contingency is actualized and
others are ruled out. Yet in one instance we ascribe agency, in
the other chance.

What is the relevant difference? Not only do we need to observe
that a contingency was actualized, but we ourselves need also
to be able to specify that contingency. The contingency must conform
to an independently given pattern, and we must be able independently
to formulate that pattern. A random ink blot is unspecifiable;
a message written with ink on paper is specifiable. Ludwig Wittgenstein
in Culture and Value made essentially the same point: "We
tend to take the speech of a Chinese for inarticulate gurgling.
Someone who understands Chinese will recognize language in
what he hears. Similarly I often cannot discern the humanity
in man."

In hearing a Chinese utterance, someone who understands Chinese
not only recognizes that one from a range of all possible utterances
was actualized, but is also able to specify the utterance as coherent
Chinese speech. Contrast this with someone who does not understand
Chinese. In hearing a Chinese utterance, someone who does not
understand Chinese also recognizes that one from a range of possible
utterances was actualized, but this time, because lacking the
ability to understand Chinese, is unable to specify the utterance
as coherent speech.

To someone who does not understand Chinese, the utterance will
appear gibberish. Gibberish-the utterance of nonsense syllables
uninterpretable within any natural language-always actualizes
one utterance from the range of possible utterances. Nevertheless,
gibberish, by corresponding to nothing we can understand in any
language, also cannot be specified. As a result, gibberish is
never taken for intelligent communication, but always for what
Wittgenstein calls "inarticulate gurgling."

This actualizing of one among several competing possibilities,
ruling out the rest, and specifying the one that was actualized
encapsulates how we recognize intelligent agency, or equivalently,
how we detect design. Experimental psychologists who study animal
learning and behavior have known this all along. To learn a task
an animal must acquire the ability to actualize behaviors suitable
for the task as well as the ability to rule out behaviors unsuitable
for the task. Moreover, for a psychologist to recognize that an
animal has learned a task, it is necessary not only to observe
the animal making the appropriate discrimination, but also to
specify this discrimination.

Thus to recognize whether a rat has successfully learned how
to traverse a maze, a psychologist must first specify which sequence
of right and left turns conducts the rat out of the maze. No doubt,
a rat randomly wandering a maze also discriminates a sequence
of right and left turns. But by randomly wandering the maze, the
rat gives no indication that it can discriminate the appropriate
sequence of right and left turns for exiting the maze. Consequently,
the psychologist studying the rat will have no reason to think
the rat has learned how to traverse the maze.

Only if the rat executes the sequence of right and left turns
specified by the psychologist will the psychologist recognize
that the rat has learned how to traverse the maze. Now it is precisely
the learned behaviors we regard as intelligent in animals. Hence
it is no surprise that the same scheme for recognizing animal
learning recurs for recognizing intelligent agency generally,
to wit: actualizing one among several competing possibilities,
ruling out the others, and specifying the one chosen.

Note that complexity is implicit here as well. To see this,
consider again a rat traversing a maze, but now take a very simple
maze in which two right turns conduct the rat out of the maze.
How will a psychologist studying the rat determine whether it
has learned to exit the maze. Just putting the rat in the maze
will not be enough. Because the maze is so simple, the rat could
by chance just happen to take two right turns, and thereby exit
the maze. The psychologist will therefore be uncertain whether
the rat actually learned to exit this maze, or whether the rat
just got lucky.

But contrast this now with a complicated maze in which a rat
must take just the right sequence of left and right turns to exit
the maze. Suppose the rat must take one hundred appropriate right
and left turns, and that any mistake will prevent the rat from
exiting the maze. A psychologist who sees the rat take no erroneous
turns and in short order exit the maze will be convinced that
the rat has indeed learned how to exit the maze, and that this
was not dumb luck.

This general scheme for recognizing intelligent agency is but
a thinly disguised form of the complexity-specification criterion.
In general, to recognize intelligent agency we must observe a
choice among competing possibilities, note which possibilities
were not chosen, and then be able to specify the possibility that
was chosen. What's more, the competing possibilities that were
ruled out must be live possibilities, and sufficiently numerous
so that specifying the possibility that was chosen cannot be attributed
to chance. In terms of complexity, this is just another way of
saying that the range of possibilities is complex.

All the elements in this general scheme for recognizing intelligent
agency (that is, choosing, ruling out, and specifying) find their
counterpart in the complexity-specification criterion. It follows
that this criterion formalizes what we have been doing right along
when we recognize intelligent agency. The complexity-specification
criterion pinpoints what we need to be looking for when we detect
design.

The implications of the complexity-specification criterion
are profound, not just for science, but also for philosophy and
theology. The power of this criterion resides in its generality.
It would be one thing if the criterion only detected human agency.
But as we've seen, it detects animal and extra-terrestrial agency
as well. Nor is it limited to intelligent agents that belong to
the physical world. The fine-tuning of the universe, about which
cosmologists make such a to-do, is both complex and specified
and readily yields design. So too, Michael Behe's irreducibly
complex biochemical systems readily yield design. The complexity-specification
criterion demonstrates that design pervades cosmology and biology.
Moreover, it is a transcendent design, not reducible to the physical
world. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could
have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of
life.

Unlike design arguments of the past, the claim that transcendent
design pervades the universe is no longer a strictly philosophical
or theological claim. It is also a fully scientific claim. There
exists a reliable criterion for detecting design-the complexity-specification
criterion. This criterion detects design strictly from observational
features of the world. Moreover, it belongs to probability and
complexity theory, not to metaphysics and theology. And although
it cannot achieve logical demonstration, it is capable of achieving
statistical justification so compelling as to demand assent. When
applied to the fine-tuning of the universe and the complex, information-rich
structures of biology, it demonstrates a design external to the
universe. In other words, the complexity-specification criterion
demonstrates transcendent design.

This is not an argument from ignorance. Just as physicists
reject perpetual motion machines because of what they know about
the inherent constraints on energy and matter, so too design theorists
reject any naturalistic reduction of specified complexity because
of what they know about the inherent constraints on natural causes.
Natural causes are too stupid to keep pace with intelligent causes.
We've suspected this all along. Intelligent design theory provides
a rigorous scientific demonstration of this longstanding intuition.
Let me stress, the complexity-specification criterion is not a
principle that comes to us demanding our unexamined acceptance-it
is not an article of faith. Rather, it is the outcome of a careful
and sustained argument about the precise interrelationships between
necessity, chance, and design (for the details, please refer to
my monograph The Design Inference).

Demonstrating transcendent design in the universe is a scientific
inference, not a philosophical speculation. Once we understand
the role of the complexity-specification criterion in warranting
this inference, several things follow immediately: (1) Intelligent
agency is logically prior to natural causation and cannot be reduced
to it. (2) Intelligent agency is fully capable of making itself
known against the backdrop of natural causes. (3) Any science
that systematically ignores design is incomplete and defective.
(4) Methodological naturalism, the view that science must confine
itself solely to natural causes, far from assisting scientific
inquiry actually stifles it. (5) The scientific picture of the
world championed since the Enlightenment is not just wrong but
massively wrong. Indeed, entire fields of inquiry, especially
in the human sciences, will need to be rethought from the ground
up in terms of intelligent design.

The Creation of the World

I want now to take stock and consider where we are in our study
of the act of creation. In the phrase "act of creation,"
so far I have focused principally on the first part of that phrase-the
"act" part, or what I've also been calling "intelligent
agency." I have devoted much of my talk till now to contrasting
intelligent agency with natural causes. In particular, I have
argued that no empirical evidence supports the reduction of intelligent
agency to natural causes. I have also argued that no good philosophical
arguments support that reduction. Indeed, those arguments that
do are circular, presupposing the very naturalism they are supposed
to underwrite. My strongest argument against the sufficiency of
natural causes to account for intelligent agency, however, comes
from the complexity-specification criterion. This empirically-based
criterion reliably discriminates intelligent agency from natural
causes. Moreover, when applied to cosmology and biology, it demonstrates
not only the incompleteness of natural causes, but also the presence
of transcendent design.

Now, within Christian theology there is one and only one way
to make sense of transcendent design, and that is as a divine
act of creation. I want therefore next to focus on divine creation,
and specifically on the creation of the world. My aim is to use
divine creation as a lens for understanding intelligent agency
generally. God's act of creating the world is the prototype for
all intelligent agency (creative or not). Indeed, all intelligent
agency takes its cue from the creation of the world. How so? God's
act of creating the world makes possible all of God's subsequent
interactions with the world, as well as all subsequent actions
by creatures within the world. God's act of creating the world
is thus the prime instance of intelligent agency.

Let us therefore turn to the creation of the world as treated
in Scripture. The first thing that strikes us is the mode of creation.
God speaks and things happen. There is something singularly appropriate
about this mode of creation. Any act of creation is the concretization
of an intention by an intelligent agent. Now in our experience,
the concretization of an intention can occur in any number of
ways. Sculptors concretize their intentions by chipping away at
stone; musicians by writing notes on lined sheets of paper; engineers
by drawing up blueprints; etc. But in the final analysis, all
concretizations of intentions can be subsumed under language.
For instance, a precise enough set of instructions in a natural
language will tell the sculptor how to form the statue, the musician
how to record the notes, and the engineer how to draw up the blueprints.
In this way language becomes the universal medium for concretizing
intentions.

In treating language as the universal medium for concretizing
intentions, we must be careful not to construe language in a narrowly
linguistic sense (for example, as symbol strings manipulated by
rules of grammar). The language that proceeds from God's mouth
in the act of creation is not some linguistic convention. Rather,
as John's Gospel informs us, it is the divine Logos, the
Word that in Christ was made flesh, and through whom all things
were created. This divine Logos subsists in himself and
is under no compulsion to create. For the divine Logos
to be active in creation, God must speak the divine Logos.
This act of speaking always imposes a self-limitation on the divine
Logos. There is a clear analogy here with human language.
Just as every English utterance rules out those statements in
the English language that were not uttered, so every divine spoken
word rules out those possibilities in the divine Logos
that were not spoken. Moreover, just as no human speaker of English
ever exhausts the English language, so God in creating through
the divine spoken word never exhausts the divine Logos.

Because the divine spoken word always imposes a self-limitation
on the divine Logos, the two notions need to be distinguished.
We therefore distinguish Logos with a capital "L"
(that is, the divine Logos) from logos with a small "l"
(that is, the divine spoken word). Lacking a capitalization convention,
the Greek New Testament employs logos in both senses. Thus
in John's Gospel we read that "the Logos was made
flesh and dwelt among us." Here the reference is to the divine
Logos who incarnated himself in Jesus of Nazareth. On the
other hand, in the First Epistle of Peter we read that we are
born again "by the logos of God." Here the reference
is to the divine spoken word that calls to salvation God's elect.

Because God is the God of truth, the divine spoken word always
reflects the divine Logos. At the same time, because the
divine spoken word always constitutes a self-limitation, it can
never comprehend the divine Logos. Furthermore, because
creation is a divine spoken word, it follows that creation can
never comprehend the divine Logos either. This is why idolatry-worshipping
the creation rather than the Creator-is so completely backwards,
for it assigns ultimate value to something that is inherently
incapable of achieving ultimate value. Creation, especially a
fallen creation, can at best reflect God's glory. Idolatry, on
the other hand, contends that creation fully comprehends God's
glory. Idolatry turns the creation into the ultimate reality.
We've seen this before. It's called naturalism. No doubt, contemporary
scientific naturalism is a lot more sophisticated than pagan fertility
cults, but the difference is superficial. Naturalism is idolatry
by another name.

We need at all costs to resist naturalistic construals of logos
(whether logos with a capital "L" or a small
"l"). Because naturalism has become so embedded in our
thinking, we tend to think of words and language as purely contextual,
local, and historically contingent. On the assumption of naturalism,
humans are the product of a blind evolutionary process that initially
was devoid not only of humans but also of any living thing whatsoever.
It follows that human language must derive from an evolutionary
process that initially was devoid of language. Within naturalism,
just as life emerges from non-life, so language emerges from the
absence of language.

Now it's certainly true that human languages are changing,
living entities-one has only to compare the King James version
of the Bible with more recent translations into English to see
how much our language has changed in the last 400 years. Words
change their meanings over time. Grammar changes over time. Even
logic and rhetoric change over time. What's more, human language
is conventional. What a word means depends on convention and can
be changed by convention. For instance, there is nothing intrinsic
to the word "automobile" demanding that it denote a
car. If we go with its Latin etymology, we might just as well
have applied "automobile" to human beings, who are after
all "self-propelling." There is nothing sacred about
the linguistic form that a word assumes. For instance, "gift"
in English means a present, in German it means poison, and in
French it means nothing at all. And of course, words only make
sense within the context of broader units of discourse like whole
narratives.

For Christian theism, however, language is never purely conventional.
To be sure, the assignment of meaning to a linguistic entity is
conventional. Meaning itself, however, transcends convention.
As soon as we stipulate our language conventions, words assume
meanings and are no longer free to mean anything an interpreter
chooses. The deconstructionist claim that "texts are indeterminable
and inevitably yield multiple, irreducibly diverse interpretations"
and that "there can be no criteria for preferring one reading
to another" is therefore false. This is not to preclude that
texts can operate at multiple levels of meaning and interpretation.
It is, however, to say that texts are anchored to their meaning
and not free to float about indiscriminately.

Deconstruction's error traces directly to naturalism. Within
naturalism, there is no transcendent realm of meaning to which
our linguistic entities are capable of attaching. As a result,
there is nothing to keep our linguistic usage in check save pragmatic
considerations, which are always contextual, local, and historically
contingent. The watchword for pragmatism is expedience, not truth.
Once expedience dictates meaning, linguistic entities are capable
of meaning anything. Not all naturalists are happy with this conclusion.
Philosophers like John Searle and D. M. Armstrong try simultaneously
to maintain an objective realm of meaning and a commitment to
naturalism. They want desperately to find something more than
pragmatic considerations to keep our linguistic usage in check.
Insofar as they pull it off, however, they are tacitly appealing
to a transcendent realm of meaning (take, for instance, Armstrong's
appeal to universals). As Alvin Plantinga has convincingly argued,
objective truth and meaning have no legitimate place within a
pure naturalism. Deconstruction, for all its faults, has this
in its favor: it is consistent in its application of naturalism
to the study of language.

By contrast, logos resists all naturalistic reductions.
This becomes evident as soon as we understand what logos
meant to the ancient Greeks. For the Greeks logos was never
simply a linguistic entity. Today when we think "word,"
we often think a string of symbols written on a sheet of paper.
This is not what the Greeks meant by logos. Logos
was a far richer concept for the Greeks. Consider the following
meanings of logos from Liddell and Scott's Greek-English
Lexicon:

the word by which the inward thought is expressed (speech)

the inward thought or reason itself (reason)

reflection, deliberation (choice)

calculation, reckoning (mathematics)

account, consideration, regard (inquiry, -ology)

relation, proportion, analogy (harmony, balance)

a reasonable ground, a condition (evidence, truth)

Logos is therefore an exceedingly rich notion encompassing
the entire life of the mind.

The etymology of logos is revealing. Logos derives
from the root l-e-g. This root appears in the Greek verb
lego, which in the New Testament typically means "to
speak." Yet the primitive meaning of lego is to lay;
from thence it came to mean to pick up and gather; then to select
and put together; and hence to select and put together words,
and therefore to speak. As Marvin Vincent remarks in his New Testament
word studies: "logos is a collecting or collection
both of things in the mind, and of words by which they are expressed.
It therefore signifies both the outward form by which the inward
thought is expressed, and the inward thought itself, the Latin
oratio and ratio: compare the Italian ragionare,
'to think' and 'to speak'."

The root l-e-g has several variants. We've already seen
it as l-o-g in logos. But it also occurs as l-e-c
in intellect and l-i-g in intelligent. This
should give us pause. The word intelligent actually comes
from the Latin rather than from the Greek. It derives from two
Latin words, the preposition inter, meaning between, and
the Latin (not Greek) verb lego, meaning to choose or select.
The Latin lego stayed closer to its Indo-European root
meaning than its Greek cognate, which came to refer explicitly
to speech. According to its etymology, intelligence therefore
consists in choosing between.

We've seen this connection between intelligence and choice
before, namely, in the complexity-specification criterion. Specified
complexity is precisely how we recognize that an intelligent agent
has made a choice. It follows that the etymology of the word intelligent
parallels the formal analysis of intelligent agency inherent in
the complexity-specification criterion. The appropriateness of
the phrase intelligent design now becomes apparent as well.
Intelligent design is a scientific research program that seeks
to understand intelligent agency by investigating specified complexity.
But specified complexity is the characteristic trademark of choice.
It follows that intelligent design is a thoroughly apt
phrase, signifying that design is inferred precisely because an
intelligent agent has done what only an intelligent agent can
do, namely, make a choice.

If intelligent design is a thoroughly apt phrase, the
same cannot be said for the phrase natural selection. The
second word in this phrase, selection, is of course a synonym
for choice. Indeed, the l-e-c in selection is a
variant of the l-e-g that in the Latin lego means
to choose or select, and that also appears as l-i-g in
intelligence. Natural selection is therefore an oxymoron.
It attributes the power to choose, which properly belongs only
to intelligent agents, to natural causes, which inherently lack
the power to choose. Richard Dawkins's concept of the blind
watchmaker follows the same pattern, negating with blind
what is affirmed in watchmaker. That's why Dawkins opens
his book The Blind Watchmaker with the statement: "Biology
is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of
having been designed for a purpose." Natural selection and
blind watchmakers don't yield actual design, but only the appearance
of design.

Having considered the role of logos in creating the
world, I want next to consider its role in rendering the world
intelligible. To say that God through the divine Logos
acts as an intelligent agent to create the world is only half
the story. Yes, there is a deep and fundamental connection between
God as divine Logos and God as intelligent agent-indeed,
the very words logos and intelligence derive from
the same Indo-European root. The world, however, is more than
simply the product of an intelligent agent. In addition, the world
is intelligible.

We see this in the very first entity that God creates-light.
With the creation of light, the world becomes a place that is
conceptualizable, and to which values can properly be assigned.
To be sure, as God increasingly orders the world through the process
of creation, the number of things that can be conceptualized increases,
and the values assigned to things become refined. But even with
light for now the only created entity, it is possible to conceptualize
light, distinguish it from darkness, and assign a positive value
to light, calling it good. The world is thus not merely a place
where God's intentions are fulfilled, but also a place where God's
intentions are intelligible. Moreover, that intelligibility is
as much moral and aesthetic as it is scientific.

God, in speaking the divine Logos, not only creates
the world but also renders it intelligible. This view of creation
has far reaching consequences. For instance, the fact-value distinction
dissolves opposite God's act of creation-indeed, what is and what
ought to be unite in God's original intention at creation. Consider
too Einstein's celebrated dictum about the comprehensibility of
the world. Einstein claimed: "The most incomprehensible thing
about the world is that it is comprehensible." This statement,
so widely regarded as a profound insight, is actually a sad commentary
on naturalism. Within naturalism the intelligibility of the world
must always remain a mystery. Within theism, on the other hand,
anything other than an intelligible world would constitute a mystery.

God speaks the divine Logos to create the world, and
thereby renders the world intelligible. This fact is absolutely
crucial to how we understand human language, and especially human
language about God. Human language is a divine gift for helping
us to understand the world, and by understanding the world to
understand God himself. This is not to say that we ever comprehend
God, as in achieving fixed, final, and exhaustive knowledge of
God. But human language does enable us to express accurate claims
about God and the world. It is vitally important for the Christian
to understand this point. Human language is not an evolutionary
refinement of grunts and stammers formerly uttered by some putative
apelike ancestors. We are creatures made in the divine image.
Human language is therefore a divine gift that mirrors the divine
Logos.

Consider what this conception of language does to the charge
that biblical language is hopelessly anthropomorphic. We continue
to have conferences in the United States with titles like "Reimagining
God." The idea behind such titles is that all our references
to God are human constructions and can be changed as human needs
require new constructions. Certain feminist theologians, for instance,
object to referring to God as father. God as father, we are told,
is an outdated patriarchal way of depicting God that, given contemporary
concerns, needs to be changed. "Father," we are told
is a metaphor co-opted from human experience and pressed into
theological service. No. No. No. This view of theological language
is hopeless and destroys the Christian faith.

The concept father is not an anthropomorphism, nor is referring
to God as father metaphorical. All instances of fatherhood reflect
the fatherhood of God. It's not that we are taking human fatherhood
and idealizing it into a divine father image à la Ludwig
Feuerbach or Sigmund Freud. Father is not an anthropomorphism
at all. It's not that we are committing an anthropomorphism by
referring to God as father. Rather, we are committing a "theomorphism"
by referring to human beings as fathers. We are never using the
word "father" as accurately as when we attribute it
to God. As soon as we apply "father" to human beings,
our language becomes analogical and derivative.

We see this readily in Scripture. Jesus enjoins us to call
no one father except God. Certainly Jesus is not telling us never
to refer to any human being as "father." All of us have
human fathers, and they deserve that designation. Indeed, the
Fifth Commandment tells us explicitly to honor our human fathers.
But human fathers reflect a more profound reality, namely, the
fatherhood of God. Or consider how Jesus responds to a rich, young
ruler who addresses him as "good master." Jesus shoots
back, "Why do you call me good? There is no one good except
God." Goodness properly applies to God. It's not an anthropomorphism
to call God good. The goodness we attribute to God is not an idealized
human goodness. God defines goodness. When we speak of human goodness,
it is only as subordinate to the divine goodness.

This view, that human language is a divine gift for understanding
the world and therewith God, is powerfully liberating. No longer
do we live in a Platonic world of shadows from which we must escape
if we are to perceive the divine light. No longer do we live in
a Kantian world of phenomena that bars access to noumena. No longer
do we live in a naturalistic world devoid of transcendence. Rather,
the world and everything in it becomes a sacrament, radiating
God's glory. Moreover, our language is capable of celebrating
that glory by speaking truly about what God has wrought in creation.

The view that creation proceeds through a divine spoken word
has profound implications not just for the study of human language,
but also for the study of human knowledge, or what philosophers
call epistemology. For naturalism, epistemology's primary problem
is unraveling Einstein's dictum: "The most incomprehensible
thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." How
is it that we can have any knowledge at all? Within naturalism
there is no solution to this riddle. Theism, on the other hand,
faces an entirely different problematic. For theism the problem
is not how we can have knowledge, but why our knowledge is so
prone to error and distortion. The Judeo-Christian tradition attributes
the problem of error to the fall. At the heart of the fall is
alienation. Beings are no longer properly in communion with other
beings. We lie to ourselves. We lie to others. And others lie
to us. Appearance and reality are out of sync. The problem of
epistemology within the Judeo-Christian tradition isn't to establish
that we have knowledge, but instead to root out the distortions
that try to overthrow our knowledge.

On the view that creation proceeds through a divine spoken
word, not only does naturalistic epistemology have to go by the
board, but so does naturalistic ontology. Ontology asks what are
the fundamental constituents of reality. According to naturalism
(and I'm thinking here specifically of the scientific naturalism
that currently dominates Western thought), the world is fundamentally
an interacting system of mindless entities (be they particles,
strings, fields, or whatever). Mind therefore becomes an emergent
property of suitably arranged mindless entities. Naturalistic
ontology is all backwards. If creation and everything in it proceeds
through a divine spoken word, then the entities that are created
don't suddenly fall silent at the moment of creation. Rather they
continue to speak.

I look at a blade of grass and it speaks to me. In the light
of the sun, it tells me that it is green. If I touch it, it tells
me that it has a certain texture. It communicates something else
to a chinch bug intent on devouring it. It communicates something
else still to a particle physicist intent on reducing it to its
particulate constituents. Which is not to say that the blade of
grass does not communicate things about the particles that constitute
it. But the blade of grass is more than any arrangement of particles
and is capable of communicating more than is inherent in any such
arrangement. Indeed, its reality derives not from its particulate
constituents, but from its capacity to communicate with other
entities in creation and ultimately with God himself.

The problem of being now receives a straightforward solution:
To be is to be in communion, first with God and then with the
rest of creation. It follows that the fundamental science, indeed
the science that needs to ground all other sciences, is communication
theory, and not, as is widely supposed an atomistic, reductionist,
and mechanistic science of particles or other mindless entities,
which then need to be built up to ever greater orders of complexity
by equally mindless principles of association, known typically
as natural laws. Communication theory's object of study is not
particles, but the information that passes between entities. Information
in turn is just another name for logos. This is an information-rich
universe. The problem with mechanistic science is that it has
no resources for recognizing and understanding information. Communication
theory is only now coming into its own. A crucial development
along the way has been the complexity-specification criterion.
Indeed, specified complexity is precisely what's needed to recognize
information.

Information-the information that God speaks to create the world,
the information that continually proceeds from God in sustaining
the world and acting in it, and the information that passes between
God's creatures-this is the bridge that connects transcendence
and immanence. All of this information is mediated through the
divine Logos, who is before all things and by whom all
things consist (Colossians 1:17). The crucial breakthrough of
the intelligent design movement has been to show that this great
theological truth-that God acts in the world by dispersing information-also
has scientific content. All information, whether divinely inputted
or transmitted between creatures, is in principle capable of being
detected via the complexity-specification criterion. Examples
abound:

The fine-tuning of the universe and irreducibly complex biochemical
systems are instances of specified complexity, and signal information
inputted into the universe by God at its creation.

Predictive prophecies in Scripture are instances of specified
complexity, and signal information inputted by God as part of
his sovereign activity within creation.

Language communication between humans is an instance of specified
complexity, and signals information transmitted from one human
to another.

The positivist science of this and the last century was incapable
of coming to terms with information. The science of the new millennium
will not be able to avoid it. Indeed, we already live in an information
age.

Creativity, Divine and Human

In closing this talk, I want to ask an obvious question: Why
create? Why does God create? Why do we create? Although creation
is always an intelligent act, it is much more than an intelligent
act. The impulse behind creation is always to offer oneself as
a gift. Creation is a gift. What's more, it is a gift of the most
important thing we possess-ourselves. Indeed, creation is the
means by which a creator-divine, human, or otherwise-gives oneself
in self-revelation. Creation is not the neurotic, forced self-revelation
offered on the psychoanalyst's couch. Nor is it the facile self-revelation
of idle chatter. It is the self-revelation of labor and sacrifice.
Creation always incurs a cost. Creation invests the creator's
life in the thing created. When God creates humans, he breathes
into them the breath of life-God's own life. At the end of the
six days of creation God is tired-he has to rest. Creation is
exhausting work. It is drawing oneself out of oneself and then
imprinting oneself on the other.

Consider, for instance, the painter Vincent van Gogh. You can
read all the biographies you want about him, but through it all
van Gogh will still not have revealed himself to you. For van
Gogh to reveal himself to you, you need to look at his paintings.
As the Greek Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras writes: "We
know the person of van Gogh, what is unique, distinct and unrepeatable
in his existence, only when we see his paintings. There we meet
a reason (logos) which is his only and we separate him
from every other painter. When we have seen enough pictures by
van Gogh and then encounter one more, then we say right away:
This is van Gogh. We distinguish immediately the otherness
of his personal reason, the uniqueness of his creative expression."

The difference between the arts and the sciences now becomes
clear. When I see a painting by van Gogh, I know immediately that
it is his. But when I come across a mathematical theorem or scientific
insight, I cannot decide who was responsible for it unless I am
told. The world is God's creation, and scientists in understanding
the world are simply retracing God's thoughts. Scientists are
not creators but discoverers. True, they may formulate concepts
that assist them in describing the world. But even such concepts
do not bear the clear imprint of their formulators. Concepts like
energy, inertia, and entropy give no clue about who formulated
them. Hermann Weyl and John von Neumann were both equally qualified
to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of Hilbert spaces. That
von Neumann, and not Weyl, made the formulation is now an accident
of history. There's nothing in the formulation that explicitly
identifies von Neumann. Contrast this with a painting by van Gogh.
It cannot be confused with a Monet.

The impulse to create and thereby give oneself in self-revelation
need not be grand, but can be quite humble. A homemaker arranging
a floral decoration engages in a creative act. The important thing
about the act of creation is that it reveal the creator. The act
of creation always bears the signature of the creator. It is a
sad legacy of modern technology, and especially the production
line, that most of the objects we buy no longer reveal their maker.
Mass production is inimical to true creation. Yes, the objects
we buy carry brand names, but in fact they are largely anonymous.
We can tell very little about their maker. Compare this with God's
creation of the world. Not one tree is identical with another.
Not one face matches another. Indeed, a single hair on your head
is unique-there was never one exactly like it, nor will there
ever be another to match it.

The creation of the world by God is the most magnificent of
all acts of creation. It, along with humanity's redemption through
Jesus Christ, are the two key instances of God's self-revelation.
The revelation of God in creation is typically called general
revelation whereas the revelation of God in redemption is typically
called special revelation. Consequently, theologians sometimes
speak of two books, the Book of Nature, which is God's self-revelation
in creation, and the Book of Scripture, which is God's self-revelation
in redemption. If you want to know who God is, you need to know
God through both creation and redemption. According to Scripture,
the angels praise God chiefly for two things: God's creation of
the world and God's redemption of the world through Jesus Christ.
Let us follow the angels' example.